Bill, Isra,
thanks. Indeed the signal Isra has detected is most likely only the start. The points Bill makes also point to things to watch. The greatest concern might be less related to budgets and to leaving multilateral organizations and more to a reassertion of nationalism and the recurrence, intensified, of the "the Internet is American" mantra. "Americans made it and the US should own it"... Panama Canal anyone? Over the years, those calls did not succeed in stopping the multistakeholder, Internet-native organizations and mechanisms, but sure were extremely disruptive at times. "Anti-globalist" and nationalist concerted action against ICANN or its principals, with weird allies from the Global South, were really tough during, say, the debate around the adult-oriented gTLD and other periods. I see all the signs that once it gets sparked it will be orders of magnitude more ferocious. And, I already see some people who have been long-time solid supporters of ICANN and the multistakeholder approach siding with the hard-line nationalism in issues like cutting aid and other international expenses and activities of the US.
The discourse on sovereignty, digital sovereignty in particular, may be turned around 180 degrees and start to bite supporters of a diluted or networked concept of sovereignty or the brilliant (IMO) approach of transitioning from digital sovereignty to digital agency as per Akash Kapur's paper.
We should be actively assessing scenarios for ICANN, the I* based in the US and those not, other multistakeholder organizations like APWG and M3AAWG, the IGF and WSIS+20, and of course Internet and AI Governance more broadly. Isra's note is a clarion call we should not ignore.
Alejandro Pisanty